Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Tenure Versus Integrity…Or Lack Therof

By Professor Doom

Many is the time I’ve mentioned what tenure has
turned into at many of our institutions of higher education. Tenure used to be
a reward for scholarship, a seal that the professor was a legitimate researcher,
and that he should have protection, so that he need no longer fear
repercussions against whatever his research might find.

I’ll grant that “job for life” on paper sounds
like a huge potential for a person to take advantage of things to just sit on
his butt and do nothing, and I suppose it’s happened. But, back when tenure was
about research and scholarly activity, this wasn’t a huge concern—the kind of
person that devotes a decade or more of his life to studying minute esoterica
isn’t simply going to stop just because he’s guaranteed a job in a subject he
obviously loves. While this fear of “dead wood” faculty is often played upon to
justify the elimination of tenure, the bottom line is it just doesn’t work that
way in general.

I ask the gentle reader to think of something
he’s loved doing for the last ten years…would the reader really stop doing what
he loved just because he got permission to do it for the rest of his life? “Job
for life” might sound great, but do realize the pay can still be very minimal,
especially if the faculty member really isn’t doing anything.

I’ll grant that elimination of mandatory
retirement laws have factored into the “deadwood” issue, and there are elderly
tenured faculty around that probably should have retired years ago…but that’s a
question of bad retirement law.

Nowadays, of course, administration has put a
stranglehold on tenure. Instead of tenure being about research, it’s more about
administrators awarding it to each other while leaving scholars in the cold
(the most egregious example would be the president of Penn State getting a
$600,000 a year tenure position in a weird department of no economic value,
but I digress). Again, it’s not tenure that’s the problem there, it’s
administrative plundering of the system—administrators with tenure were dead
wood long before they got tenure.

Last
year’s tenure shenanigans at public Kean University illustrates what tenure
is for faculty members today: a lie and a deathtrap. See, some faculty were up
for tenure, but no longer is tenure about faculty determining if the
scholarship is worthwhile, instead tenure only flows from administration…it’s a
stranglehold by those that probably shouldn’t be in that position, any more
than they should be in control of any other part of higher education.

“..Farahi argued tenure, which
is essentially a lifetime job guarantee, is "not an entitlement" and
should not be given out lightly at the public university. But members of Kean's
faculty union said most of the fifth-year professors up for tenure this year
have spotless records and the unanimous endorsements of their college and
department tenure committees.”

Now, tenure has
lengthy rules about how it is to be rewarded. Administrators could follow those
rules, but, that would require integrity. So, spotless records and unanimous
endorsements are simply not going to cut it. Note the change here: scholars’
endorsements are irrelevant to scholarship now, it’s only up to the whims of
administration.

I know of institutions that have done extraordinarily scummy things when it
comes to promotion; the article I’m quoting from above is not really mentioning
anything exceptional, compared to what I’ve seen with my own eyes.

What’s really
neat about this is faculty that are denied tenure are fired. Hmm, an
administrator can fire faculty with spotless records and unanimous
endorsements, and then replace those faculty with minimally paid adjuncts, indirectly
putting the difference in salary into his own pocket. President Farahi is
shocked, shocked that anyone would consider such a possibility:

“…Farahi has denied faculty union allegations that he is using
the tenure process to replace tenured professor positions with lower-paid
adjunct professor posts…”

Oh, well, there
it is, then. He says it’s not about the money he’d make. Naturally, for this
denial to stick, he would have to be otherwise very popular, renowned for integrity,
or in a position of absolute power no matter how corrupt he is.

Let’s talk
popularity:

“Kean's faculty union announced
the results of a "no confidence" vote in the university's office of
academic affairs. Of the professors and librarians who participated in the
largely-symbolic vote, 96 percent said they had "no confidence" …The
vote is the third "no confidence" vote at Kean in recent years. The
faculty union previously voted "no confidence" in Farahi and the
board of trustees.”

Ok,
so it’s not that the Poo-Bah is popular and loved. Even the worst U.S.
presidents don’t get approval ratings of 4%, and manage to keep approval that
low for sustained periods. That’s quite an achievement, but not one that leads
me to believe I should suspect this guy just has the occasional disagreement
with actual scholars.

Ok,
that’s just the entire athletic program,
and lots of schools are completely corrupt in this regard. I’ll have to talk
athletics at some point, I guess. Maybe he shouldn’t be held responsible for
that.

“…The résumés in question were
submitted in 1994, 2001 and 2008 for routine accreditation reviews of the
university’s public administration program.

Farahi said he has never claimed
to have been acting academic dean at Avila College in Missouri. Nor has he
boasted of publishing "over 50 technical articles in major
publications," as the résumés state.”

Actually,
there are numerous fictional claims on the resumes; he blames underlings, and
so shouldn’t be held responsible for that, either, but I can’t help but be
confused. This guy is responsible for a gigantic institution, but can’t make
his own resume? Why would you trust something like that to underlings you don’t
know, as Farahi claims?

Instead
of being protection for scholars, tenure has turned into a method to get rid of
faculty and replace them with marginal adjuncts. The only thing keeping this
from happening is the integrity of the people running our institutions.

So,
he’s not on top through popularity, or integrity…could it be that other thing I
mentioned?

I
maintain that scholars and educators, and not professional administrators,
should be running institutions of scholarship and education. I’ll grant that it
wouldn’t be a utopia, but how could they do a worse job than the plunderers we
have now?